Image
of José Cardero's drawing “Tetacú, chief of the
entrance of Juan de Fuca”,
ca. 1792.
(See map at right for location of Straight of Juan de Fuca in relation to the
Chinooks at the mouth of the Columbia.)
Courtesy the
Maritime Museum of British Columbia

“These dried clams are a great article of trade with the Indians of
the interior, and quantities are annually carried from Shoal-water [Willapa]
Bay up the Columbia” (Swan 1857:85).

Click here
for fur trader Alexander Ross's account of trade and activities on The
Columbia, taken from:
Alexander Ross, Adventures of the First Settlers on the Oregon or
Columbia River, 1810-1813, vol. 7, p. 129.

“There was a lot of contact between the two
areas. In Chinook Wawa, or jargon, the language that
I have learned, about seven percent of it comes from
the west coast of Vancouver Island languages. We had
a slave right here from the west coast of Vancouver
Island. Those exchanges went on all the time.

Northwest Coast

“We also traded with the Salish-speaking people from the Frasier
River area. They have that really fine jade, or nephrite, a very fine
hard green stone for adzes and that was the primary adze blade for making
canoes or working house boards, or anything, here. And that was sold out
of there in blanks to here and people have those still today here, that
are directly from those blades, from up there in Frasier River.

“Dried clams and dried salalberry cakes were
traded up river from here. We have a very well known
kind of hide armor that was traded out of here. And
that went up north, up the coast usually. I’ve
rarely seen those before. But I have seen a really fantastic
example of one that was found in Tlinget or Haida country.
It was beautifully painted with an absolutely perfect
power-figure design from this territory around the mouth
of the Columbia River" (Tony Johnson interview: 2002).

“... about the elk hides that they got here.
They were called clamons, and they sent them all over
the world, and nary an arrow could pierce those clamons.
So, if they ever had a dispute or an argument with anybody
they always had those as their protection.

“I must say, though, that the Chinooks primarily
were not warlike. They were very peaceful, and they
treated everybody well that came up and down the river,
even though these people were very strange. Can you
get the feeling of how they felt, when they saw these
new people coming up and down their river? They felt
that they were welcome, and they welcomed everybody,
not knowing what was going to happen in the future" (Chief
Cliff Snider interview: 2002).

Wapato roots were one of the main items traded from upriver to the Lower
Chinooks. Lewis and Clark declared the wapato to be “the most valuable
of all their roots," noting that it was foreign to the neighborhood
of Ft. Clatsop.